An oft-repeated open secret of Thai-American restaurateurs, one likely applicable to those adapting other foreign cuisines for spice-averse palettes, is that when cooking for Americans not familiar with the cuisine, the safest method is to prepare the food as they do for children, with spice levels pushed way down, and sugar content way up. This leads to legions of syrupy pad thais, bogged down with ketchup and peanut butter, the sharp, sparkling flavors of the cuisine buried in viscous goop. I spend an inordinate amount of my time figuring out how to avoid such goop, and yet sometimes it’s worth surrendering to the allure of something intended specifically for a child’s palate. Enter Happy Soda (a.k.a. Gembira), a roseate cartoon beverage overflowing with mysterious sweetness. I spotted this one at the now-monthly Indonesian Food Bazaar, held inside Elmhurst’s St. James Episcopal Church, where vendors gather to sell homemade batches of native meals and snacks. The onslaught of unfamiliar items (Indonesia being another of those countries whose dozens of regional cuisines I’m only beginning to understand) forced me to do several laps to take it all in before ordering, and on these the thing which kept standing out to me was not any specific food item but this glowing soda, clutched in the hand of many a dawdling child, the source of its color still a mystery. My initial suspicion after purchasing one, which was prepared fresh before my eyes, was strawberry; a little research reveals the answer is actually coco-pandan syrup, a mixture of two maritime Asian staples, blended with condensed milk over ice, filled out with a healthy pour of seltzer for the requisite fizz. A tad too sweet for me, but I’m glad to have added this particular shade of pink to my rainbow of consumed beverage colors.
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I tend to consider the weekend food festivals which populate the outer boroughs with a bit of wariness, hoping for the best while expecting the worst. In worst-case scenarios, you end up with a fiasco like the recent opening night of the Queens Night Market, which approached Woodstock ‘99 levels of unpreparedness, the food concourse transformed into a hopelessly tangled knot of long lines wound through one another. Meanwhile (in another distinct form of Hell On Earth) the distant Porta-a-Potties had such extreme waiting times that beer-swollen men (and women) took to urinating en masse in the dark perimeter of trees that ringed the park. Yet even fiascoes can have an upside, and while I was nearly trampled on several occasions (and had to stoop to peeing in the trees) I did get to try Chimney Cake (aka Kürtőskalács), which was pleasant, if not quite substantial enough to merit a 50 minute wait. I also got to exercise some judgement, and, fleeing this waking nightmare, ferry my friends past the nearby hotspots (Tortilleria Nixtamal, where I’d stopped earlier in the day for some skate tacos and a pork tamal, was overflowing with desperate dinner seekers) and out into the safer reaches of Queens. The result was a nice, tranquil Indonesian meal of Rendang, Ketoprak, Perkedel and Rissoles at Elmhurst’s Upi Jaya.
New York City’s Japan Society is currently hosting a two-month series on Okinawa, the country’s southernmost prefecture, home to a culture that skews far from the rigid intensity of the rest of the archipelago. Held on Tuesday the 3rd, the ‘Explore Okinawa’ event seemed like the most general of these, a broad primer on the island’s culture, history and cuisine. Okinawa is actually the largest island in the Ryukyu chain, which existed as an independent kingdom / Chinese affiliate state until being brought under Japanese control in the 17th century, persisting as largely autonomous entity for centuries afterward. Absorbing influences from all over the Western Pacific, the island culture has produced distinctive exports like bingata, a painstaking, multi-step textile form, and karate, Japan’s best-known martial art.
In most cases, souse refers to a variant of head cheese, an aspic of skull padding and organ meats pickled with vinegar. Picadillo, throughout Spain and Latin America, points to a swirling of spiced ground meat seasoned with tomatoes and peppers, plus various aromatics and spices. In Panama, as I learned from a recent visit to Crown Heights’ Panamanian Independence Day festival, things are a little different. There, souse instead refers to the other extreme of nose-to-tail eating - pickled feet, usually of the porcine or bovine variety - a denomination which actually applies all over the Caribbean. Historically connected to that other souse, it demonstrates an inventive way to make use of spare parts, via a spicy, citrusy preparation that can now also be prepared with chicken feet or conch. Sharing the vinegary base of the European variety, the one here also comes smothered in quick-pickled cucumbers, ribbons of white onion and rounds of Scotch Bonnet pepper, the entire thing immersed a tincture tinged with lime. Further flavor is provided through the addition of culantro (aka Chadon Beni), cilantro’s brawnier cousin.
The result is both bracingly fresh and a bit unsettling - the sensation of nibbling cold gelatinous flesh off of a pig’s hoof making me glad I didn’t order the cow version - although it’s ultimately not much different than a plate of pork belly. Joe DiStefano's Chopsticks and Marrow is an invaluable resource for New York City eating, especially for those seeking to comprehend the amazing, globe-spanning bounty of the borough of Queens. Great news, then, that he's responsible for selecting the vendors at the new Queens branch of the Smorgasburg empire, with a selection of local specialists that goes beyond the market’s usual roster of comfort-food dealers and cutesy appropriationists. On a recent visit I strolled around the enclosed cement area near MOMA PS1, marveling at the value of the chicken satay from Celebes Bakar (four sizable sticks for $5, sadly unphotographed) and the vocal range and carnival barker insistence of the guy hawking Balut. I demurred from trying this Filipino specialty, in which fertilized duck eggs are seasoned with a chili, garlic and vinegar broth. Instead I opted for the safer Kinunot Na Pagi (flaked stingray), prepared in a style specific to the country’s coastline-blessed Bicol region. Presented by Woodside restaurant Papa’s Kitchen in sandwich form, it took on the airy qualities of a good lobster roll, coconut-kissed meat swaddled in a section of soft baguette, topped with a few sprigs of Moringa, a green that’s of late been minted as the newest superfood. Equally interesting was the hallaca, an open-faced, tamale-like assemblage, purchased from the Ecuadorian-focused Son Foods, which also offers beef tongue tacos and empanadas. This log of stuffed masa was strangely sweet and pale in color, which led me to wonder if yuca was being employed (this is the case in the Puerto Rican hallaca, although who knows here) or if sugar had found its way into the mix. In terms of texture it was reminiscent of a recent meal of Pastel de Choclo prepared by some Chilean friends. The hallaca is also a reminder of the innovative use of corn across the entirety of The Andes; this particular preparation appears in different iterations all over the region and beyond, also sharing some DNA (and popularity as a Yuletide treat) with Caribbean pasteles, Queens Smorgasburg, meanwhile, holds steady at its current home (43-29 Crescent Street) until October 31.
Less a neighborhood than a fossilized, fantastical curiosity, Little Italy clings to its exaggerated Paisan image as a charm against the turmoil at its borders, embodied by ever-increasing Chinatown sprawl and encroaching Nolita/SoHo development. In constant danger of erasure, its immigrant population base long since fled to the suburbs, the area’s lingering Italian-American heritage has inflated to accommodate this vacuum, plying tourists with a cartoonish approximation of vintage New York City, via a showy spread of ‘old-fashioned’ red sauce and clam joints. All this straining for authenticity climaxes with a burst of cannoli cream and scalding fry oil during San Gennaro, the two week festival ostensibly dedicated to the patron saint of Naples, who each September 19th gets marched down Mulberry and pinned with dollar bills, a fitting ritual for a festival that seems designed to promote its accompanying neighborhood by turning its proud history into a lumbering commodity.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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